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The status of Mandarin in Taiwan

Language Log 2022-11-23

Article by Keoni Everington in Taiwan News (11/19/22):

"90% of Taiwanese say learning Mandarin beneficial to job, relationships"

'Mandarin education should not be a victim of politics,' say National Taiwan Normal University professors

From AntC:

I'm puzzled by this headline, and the article doesn't elucidate: is anyone in Taiwan _not_ learning Mandarin? What would that mean?

The last paragraph:
 
…the younger generation is experiencing a phenomenon called "language degradation," such as more frequent nonsensical expressions and less precise sentences.
 
Is this perhaps talking about failing to master the writing system?
 

Topics for discussion

1. Is this just normal language attrition?

2. The result of making more space for Taiwanese?

3. Encroaching English?

4. The burgeoning of internet language (e.g., Martian, video game lingo, etc.)?

5. The overwhelming influence of relying on computers to write Sinoglyphs?

Martian language (Chinese: 火星文; pinyin: huǒxīng wén; lit. 'Martian script'), sometimes also called brain-disabled characters (simplified Chinese: 脑残体; traditional Chinese: 腦殘體; pinyin: nǎocán tǐ), is the nickname of unconventional representation of Chinese characters online. "Martian" describes that which seems strange to local culture. The term was popularised by a line from the 2001 Hong Kong comedy Shaolin Soccer, in which Sing (Stephen Chow) tells Mui (Zhao Wei): "Go back to Mars. The Earth is so dangerous."

In the 2006 General Scholastic Ability Test of Taiwan, students were asked to interpret symbols and phrases written in "Martian language" based on contexts written in standard language. Controversies which followed forced the testing center to abandon the practice in future exams.

In 2007, Martian language began to catch on in mainland China. The first adopters of Martian language mainly consisted of Post-90s netizens. They use it in their nicknames, short messages, and chat rooms in order to demonstrate personality differences. Later, they found that their teachers and parents could hardly figure out their new language, which quickly became their secret code to communicate with each other. Chinese online bloggers followed up the trend to use Martian language, because they found that their blog posts written in the new language can easily pass Internet censorship engines, which are currently based on text-matching techniques. The Martian language became so popular in cyberspace that software were created to translate between Chinese and Martian language.

(source)

One thing is certain, written language in the Sinosphere is transforming so radically that it is hard to predict or even imagine what it will be like 5, 10, 15 years from now.

 

Selected readings